Macedonia, Sunday, 7 October, 2018… Sunday afternoon was not a time for resting, but instead was used for continued political quarrels between the parties. The ferocious political crisis that has been caused by the opponents of the Macedonian Euro-Atlantic integrations, leaves no space for a Sunday break. VMRO-DPMNE’s press center is tireless as always, hence they didn’t pass the opportunity to produce abundant, although repetitive, contents. Their purpose is, among else, also in the direction of “closing ranks”, blurring the ever more obvious discord and internal-party disunion. Let’s see what kind of arsenal the political parties have at their disposal at the end of the weekend.
First, Gruevski sent on his Facebook profile a “proclamation” to his party, somewhere around 3 o’clock after midnight: “I want to send an announcement to my party, in regards to the political prosecution against me and the politically motivated and orchestrated verdict against me that was published these days. If anyone or in any way demands from you to make even the slightest concession that would be harmful to the state and national interests, putting that in correlation with stopping or mitigating the political prosecution against me, as a long-time leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization- Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity and as its honorary President and current MP, I ask you, without any deliberation, without any hesitation, to decisively reject such an indecent proposal”.
We will let the public decide whether with this Gruevski wanted to attract attention to himself in the late hours, in fear that he would be completely forgotten, or if he truly wanted to send a message while suffering from insomnia.
Following the honorary, the current President of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickovski, also reacted. He called a press conference in the party headquarters where he announced his conditions. Even Mickoski is experiencing “revelation” and says: “Republic of Macedonia is entering a new political crisis”. He “finds” the responsibility for this in the “obvious inability of the government to manage the key processes in the country”, as he said.
In his relatively long, every so often heard speech, he said that VMRO-DPMNE has accepted the challenge for elections, although that didn’t really happen, but tactics were used from the very beginning in order to see how much Prime Minister Zaev is prepared for early parliamentary elections. For these elections to take place, Mickoski says “there has to be a technical Przino government, in contents same as the one SDSM and Zoran Zaev had before the elections in 2016. Because it is necessary to create an atmosphere of a fair election process, which at this moment does not exist due to the violence of the government and the usurped power”. Here he didn’t say what the violence and usurped power consist of, and in which way they correspond to the time of his political mentor Gruevski.
“The second demand is a Public Prosecutor who will be on the proposal of the opposition, as well as a parliamentary committee that will be reviewing the irregularities of the referendum process, so that we don’t have the same ones repeated during the pre-election period and on the day of the voting”, – states Mickoski in his wish list. He tried once again to convince the Macedonian public that he hadn’t demanded amnesty for his bosses and that he hadn’t obstructed the investigation work of the SPO.
In addition, he suggested to Prime Minister Zaev, rather “originally”, for him to abandon the Agreement with Greece, and then to go to elections, as a second option.
The question remains open whether Mickoski believes that someone will take seriously his appearance today, which looked more like an echo of Gruevski’s night-time Facebook campaign than the result of rational reasoning.
VMRO-DPMNE’s press center had “only” four longer reading texts, of which two referred to criticism to SDSM’s government on nepotism and corruption, and one was a reply at the press conference to Kostadin Kostadinov, an MP in parliament from the lines of SDSM.
Kostadinov stated: “The leadership of VMRO-DPMNE and Hristijan Mickoski need to stop spreading fabrications and fake news and to clearly say whether they are for Macedonia joining EU and NATO. The choice is clear: either EU and NATO, or isolation. The top people in VMRO-DPMNE need to say what they are in favour of. If they are FOR EU and NATO, now is the time for them to stop with the fake news and the attempts to provide amnesty for Nikola Gruevski and to call on the VMRO-DPMNE MPs to respect the will of the citizens in Parliament…Membership and EU and NATO has no alternative. Over 600.000 citizens sent out a clear message that they are for a future in EU and NATO, and all of us need to respect that decision. However, if the MPs of VMRO- DPMNE, if the leadership of the party and Mickoski refuse to do so, then early parliamentary elections are inevitable, organized immediately”.
VMRO-DPMNE’s reply at the press conference was actually just a brief speech by Mickoski.
On the side-lines of the political life during the citizens’ Sunday breaky, there was also an announcement from Liljana Popovska’s miniature party DOM, which “reveals” that the leader had asked her colleagues not to propose her as president of the party at the upcoming congress.
DUI rested today.
Xhabir Deralla
